Segregation is a harsh word. Its painful history involves extremes of racism and oppression, and officially, it no longer exists. Yet today new, less obvious social divisions compart and conquer urban space. City centers are sanitized and redeveloped to attract investment, with prohibitively high rents creating homogenous zones for the rich, while the less affluent are pushed to the outskirts. New ethnic divisions emerge as well, driven by a resurgent xenophobia and tacit racism. How much ethnic division goes into the separation of cities into rich and poor? How are the bodies of migrants and refugees controlled and kept out of sight? Is there a creeping ghettoization of immigrants or even a new form of socio-ethnic segregation afoot? Author Felix Klopotek meets urban researcher and activist Sinthujan Varatharajah to discuss the interplay of the new classist and racist divisions in neo-liberal urban policy, their explosive potentials, and ways to overcome their detrimental effects. The talk is moderated BAHAR SANLI.

Sinthujan Varatharajah is a PhD candidate in political geography at University College London. He works as a project coordinator for Refugees Welcome and is the founder of the refugee narrative project Roots of Diaspora.

Felix Klopotek lives and works in Cologne. He writes for StadtRevue, Konkret, Jungle World, and Kaput Mag, and he is the editor of the book series „Dissidenten der Arbeiterbewegung“ („dissidents of the labor movement“). In 2014, with the support of the Academy of the Arts of the World, he realized the project „A Revolutionary Parable on the Equality of Men“, a study of the life and work of the Galician revolutionary Roman Rosdolsky.